Our aim in this article is to examine policy discourses that promote positional changes for thepreschool class in the Swedish educational system. The preschool class is currently going througha watershed period, which is characterized by uncertainty regarding its position in the educationsystem. In this article, we explore changes in the Swedish education system by analysing policydocuments from 1997 to 2017 with a specific focus on the positional shift of the preschool class.The departure point for our study is that policy relates to the concepts of subjectification,qualification and socialization. In addition, we examine how these goals in education are to beachieved and the educational restructuring required to do this. The findings show that policydiscourses about the preschool class have shifted from pedagogical arguments about thebenefits of pedagogical integration, consensus and the move of preschool pedagogy into schooleducation, to more school- oriented, knowledge-economy arguments about increased goalachievement. Schoolarization describes a positional shift in the education system that containstwo collaborative processes: an approach towards school content, goals and forms for teachingand a distancing to the content and goals formulated for Early Education and Care.
In the Nordic curriculum theory (CT) tradition, questions linked to educational change and school governance have long been a crucial research issue. However, despite several decades of decentralized school systems, local school governance has been a highly neglected field of research. Considering the changing landscape of school governance in terms of re-centralization, where the state’s aim is to take stronger control of school outcomes, the conditions for local school governance have changed. Based on results from two research projects in two Swedish municipalities, and from a neo-institutional theoretical perspective, the aim of this article is to contribute to the CT research field by exploring and theorizing on local school governance. Four management strategies that local educational authorities (LEAs) employed to manage the schools could be distinguished: local school management via i) data use, ii) the standardization and formalization of schools’ quality assurance processes and routines, iii) quality dialogues, iv) professional learning and best practices. These management strategies and activities were mostly organized, and conducted within the scope of the LEAs’ quality assurance systems and were primarily built on normative and cultural – cognitive elements. A way to conceptualize this form of governance is through the concept of ‘local quality management’.
In this paper, we theorize on local school governance through a multi-method case study of a large-sized Swedish municipality by drawing on neo-institutional theory. In light of a changing governing landscape in Sweden in terms of a ‘re-centralization’, new conditions between the state, the local education authorities (LEA) and the schools have emerged. The aim of this study is to examine what policy actions the LEA employ for governing the school and in what ways that principals respond and handle these policy actions. The results point to the fact that the LEA uses a bench-marking strategy through its quality assurance system and intervene if results are poor. Principals seek support from the LEA, but are anxious that their autonomy will be diminished and therefore function as ‘gate-. The system for quality assurance is appreciated by principals, but standards aimed at framing discursive communication on quality are criticized. Principals turn to managers below the superintendent, which creates a tension between managers. The study shows that different levels and actors must be taken into account in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the multi-layered field of local policy enactment.
This article surveys current management ideals of higher education institutions, and our analytical focus is on the balance between line management and faculty self-governance. It presents an empirical study of evolving governance structures including all 31 public sector higher education institutions in Sweden. The point of departure is the Autonomy Reform of 2011, which resulted in a deregulation of the Higher Education Act, and a loss of constitutional support for collegial bodies. To assess the consequences of the reform, we have examined collegial bodies and academic leadership posts before the reform (2010) and after (2020). Our findings show escalating line management in the appointment of academic leaders, a diluted role for collegial expertise, and a loss of decision-making authority for collegial bodies. What we observe is the decollegialization of higher education institutions. Our study contributes to the existing literature with an unusually comprehensive and fine-grained analysis of the consequences of new managerial ideals at the local institutional level.
For a long time, the Swedish government has tried different reforms to counteract declining student results. One action was to implement a salary-lift for teachers perceived as especially skilled. However, changes within socially complex systems tend to create tensions and resistance among the staff. In this reform, a majority of teachers were excluded from the payroll raise, which led to a renegotiation of roles, rules and commitments within the faculty. In this study, the principals’ perception of the teachers’ initial reactions and responses to the implementation is the focus. The data for this study contain four narratives from principals who implemented the salary lift within their organizations. The analysis shows that the reform challenged the principals as heads of the organizations. They stated that the salary lift created conflicts and insecurities among the teachers related to their motivation, sense of trust and self-efficacy. These conflicts and insecurities seemed to fuel a spiral of mistrust within the schools in the wake of the reform.
In 2013, the Swedish government launched a reform of career services for teachers that introduced förstelärare (‘first teacher’) as a new category. This article presents results from an ongoing research project about the implementation of the reform in a municipal local context in public schools with attention to leadership practices förstelärare engage in and the impact on the educational leadership of the principals. The theoretical framework for the analysis provides perspectives on the interdependencies between and within different levels and sub-systems in the school organisation through the concepts of nested learning systems and distributed leadership. The main results indicate that the introduction of förstelärare strengthens the idea of distributed leadership through the fact that förstelärare engage in leadership practices mandated by the principals. However, it also challenges existing collegial structures through an increased need for collaboration and interaction among both principals and förstelärare.
With the advent of the knowledge era, academia has begun to play new roles in society. As a result, requirements for the design of universities may also change. Milieus of lively and flourishing urban life that foster encounters and unforeseen collaborations within academia – as well as between academia and society at large – have been called for. In this research, a GIS analysis of Swedish register data shows that such mixed environments are limited to the university facilities situated within city centres. However, both new and abandoned locations are more mixed than average. Based on a literature review, we argue that university planners need a clear priority ranking of their objectives, as different objectives may call for different kinds of design. Moreover, the review reveals that other environmental qualities have also been ascribed importance to success. In general, the existing literature provides limited guidance to designers, due to a lack of consensus and because the actual effects of specific measures are less researched than stated perceptions. Thus, so far, the contemporary direction in university design has limited expressions in Sweden, has unclear – and potentially conflicting – objectives and is based on insufficient empirical knowledge.
During the last decade, the Swedish School-age Educare has been the object of multiple government-enforced reform initiatives in order to clarify its purpose and increase educational quality and equivalence. In 2019, a teacher certification reform was imposed on the educational programme, concretizing responsibilities between categories of staff and regulating hiring procedures in order to raise the level of formally qualified personnel. At the same time, Sweden was (and still is) battling a severe teacher shortage, with teachers certified towards the School-age Educare being one of the scarcer categories to acquire. Through a single-case study, this article explores a local municipal response to this policy dilemma by focusing on the ways in which the reform demands are translated and made sense of in terms of organizational routines. The findings show that actors make sense of demands based on prior knowledge and beliefs connected to identity and qualitative endeavours of the educational programme, which in turn shape ‘scripts’ to routine performance. However, when these scripts collide with performative constraints connected to organizational capacities, pragmatic routines are designed in order to partly sustain apprehensions from the initial reform translation, which in turn shapes further routinized action.
This article focuses on the participation of industrial and corporate actors in science and technology education in Sweden. Opening up schools for the participation of industrial actors may be seen as a means of making education more connected to society. However, it may also contribute to the emergence of tensions related to ensuring values of objectivity and neutrality. The aim is to investigate how teachers deal with commercial interest, bias and partiality in collegial evaluations of industry-produced teaching resources. The data consist of focus group interviews with teachers, which were analysed using an ecological perspective on teacher agency. The teachers’ evaluations of the teaching resources focussed: (1) The legitimacy of evaluating teaching resources in terms of bias. (2) The value of a resource in terms of correctness and versatility, (3) Acceptable ways in which commercial interests are communicated (undercurrent messages, logos and advertisement), (4) Bias in light of different educational aims, and (5) Upholding neutrality versus imparting specific values and behaviours. The results are discussed with regard to the teacher agency achieved in evaluations concerning commercial interests, bias and partiality.
The focus of this article is on how the relative autonomy of middle managers is expressed in the context of local education administrations. In the Swedish education system, middle managers often constitute the link between principals at schools and local government education administrators. Little is known about what such middle managers do and why. To fill this knowledge gap, this article presents and discusses the results of interviews with middle managers, chief education officers and principals linked to four local education administrations in Sweden. A previously developed analytical model has been adapted to facilitate the interpretation of results and how they relate to the concept of autonomy in education administration. The framework encompasses four cognitive domains: educational, social, developmental, and administrative. The results display middle manager autonomy as fostered and limited by all four domains and how the use of relative autonomy varies between middle managers. There are differences between middle managers in separate local education administrations and middle managers working in the same organisation. A major finding is that autonomy is always conditioned, not only by organisation but significantly also by cognition and administrative interaction.
Mentorship is a method that is used in both professional education and training and inworking life to introduce new employees. Previous research has shown that there is limitedexperience of mentorship in the parts of higher education that are outside of professionaleducation and training. The purpose of this article is to deepen knowledge of how mentorshipcan be used as a pedagogic tool to integrate theory and practice in a social scienceprogramme at a Swedish university. The empirical material is obtained from a case study thatincludes students/mentees and contact persons/mentors. The results show that mentorship isan important contribution to the learning process for the integration of theory and practice inhigher education to develop both practically applied and theoretically anchored knowledge.Besides cooperation forms and workplace-related studies in the programme, mentorship thusbecomes the third component of the learning process.
During the last decade, the notion of norm-critique has had an impact on Swedish educational policymaking, including the gender-equality mission of the Swedish preschool. The aim is to better understand and problematize the relationship between gender equality, as formal curricular content, and norm-critique, as informal curricular content, in educational policymaking in the field of Swedish preschool. The paper asks: What understandings are ascribed to the notion of norm-critique in relation to Swedish preschool’s gender-equality mission? Theoretically, the paper draws on the concept of epistemological understandings and the dynamic between epistemologies of gender equality and norm-critique. In terms of materials and methods, three focus group discussions with 13 preschool managers, here conceptualized as local policy actors, were analysed. The main finding is that these local policy actors view the notion of norm-critique as a revitalizer of the gender-equality mission of the Swedish preschool. A first conclusion is that the notion of norm-critique enhances the gender-equality mission because it might help local policy actors to view gender equality from a broader perspective and in relation to other, intersecting causes of inequality. A second, and somewhat contradictory, conclusion is that the notion of norm-critique risks undermining the gender-equality mission by replacing it.
The definition for special education needs (SEN) and the policies for its assessment varies widely between countries. This paper aims to investigate similarities and differences through a Swedish-German comparative approach. Based on the distinction between categorical and relational perspectives as expressions of specific thought styles, 58 SEN assessment reports from both countries were qualitatively analysed. The results demonstrate the maintenance of the categorical perspective in terms of focusing on the pupil’s ‘failure’. This result is even more notable in the German examples than the Swedish cases. Exceptionally and in both countries, a relational perspective emerges, taking teaching and the social environment into account. In conclusion, we suggest a flexible SEN approach with a stronger emphasis on the relation between the individual and the learning environment.
This article studies how local autonomy meets international and national quality policy rhetoric. The research question asked is: How can the local doing of education be understood in relation to international and national quality policy rhetoric, and how does this affect teachers’ autonomy to realise nationally formulated goals? To answer this, two sets of theoretical concepts are combined: horizon of expectation and space of experience (Koselleck, 2002) and autonomy and control (Cribb & Gewirtz, 2007). An earlier study (Bergh, 2010) of how the use of the quality concept has successively changed in Swedish authoritative educational texts from the 1990s and onwards provides a broader context for the local study, which empirically builds on interviews with local politicians, civil servants, school leaders and teachers. The results show that the national policy rhetoric has a strong impact on local practice, but also that certain interpretations are taken further in the local context, such as an emphasis on market forces. Although possible conflicts in the national context are concealed by the use of positive concepts like quality, these conflicts eventually erupt in the local setting, often with far reaching consequences for its different actors and for the education in question.
In this study, aspects of space and time in German and Swedish classrooms are observed and compared to characterize differences and similarities in classrooms and lessons in different contexts. The organization and control of individuals and their actions in relation to time and space are analysed using categories derived from Discipline and Punish utilizing a model of empirically informed typification analysis. The empirical data consist of field studies conducted by participant observation in German and Swedish classrooms. The type of classroom found in Germany is characterized by fixed boundaries and frameworks. The lessons are uniform, and class time is structured so as to minimize the number of interruptions between different activities. Boundaries are less clear in the type of classroom found in the Swedish material, where the classroom is just one of many places for teaching and learning. The lessons and schedules are less uniformly structured, and a lot of time is spent discussing the plans for instruction.
This article is an empirically grounded contribution to the understanding of how digitalization in education is interpreted and made into being by actors in everyday lives, in this case children and teachers in Swedish early childhood education. The focus is on interactions in an early childhood classroom upon and around a digital interactive floor setting. Drawing on the theoretical concept of socio-spatiality, this literacy event is understood as an enactment of policy where both teacher and children become actors and subjects. Using observations and video recordings as a methodological approach, the study shows how the literacy event in the digital setting is enacted and constituted as a relational process between literacy desirings and education policy regarding digitalization. The authors suggest that engaging with both children’s processes of literacy desirings and educational commands in ECE digital activities serves as a productive way to investigate how digitalization is enacted in contemporary ECE.
This paper presents knowledge about learning-oriented leadership as part of managers’ daily work. The aim is to contribute findings from an empirical study in the software communication industry, and discuss their potential contribution to leadership in the school context. Through an empirical and learning-theory based analysis of managerial acts of influence, learning-oriented leadership is suggested as an analytical concept. In the educational leadership literature concerning instructional, pedagogic or learner-centred leadership, the interpretation of each concept is shifting and thus unstable. The studying of a non-school empirical context contributes to an analytical separation of the pedagogical leadership task from the pedagogical core task, which may be useful when returning to the school context. The learning-oriented categorisation of managerial acts of influence presents different routes for managers – including school principals – to intervene in their employees’ learning and competence on both individual and collective levels. Here, we offer an alternative suggestion for how to understand what principals do to influence the work in their organisations.
In this paper, I introduce a deliberative understanding of the formation of the curriculum and school subjects, going beyond a view of subjects as distinctive and prescribed purpose-built enterprises. The basic idea of a deliberative curriculum is developed in relation to curriculum theory and didactics (didaktik), and the disposition of the paper is as follows: I begin by presenting a short conceptual overview of curriculum history,based on Pinar’s (1978) threefold categorization. I then present what I term ‘didactic typologies’, implyingdifferent interpretations concerning the formation of curriculum and the content of school subjects. I exemplify the need for a problematization of curriculum by analyzing a recent article by Zongyi Deng (2009) on how to deal with curriculum questions at different levels with reference to ‘liberal studies’, in which he claims ‘that a school subject is a distinctive purpose-built enterprise’. I then make an extended case for what I call, with reference to Null (2011), a ‘deliberative curriculum’, and try to analyze some of the characteristics and consequences of this perspective for curriculum making, teachers’ professionalism, and classroom activities.Finally, I link and exemplify these three areas to the recent Swedish educational and curriculum history.
This article is an unchanged, re-published version of: Inger Eriksson & Viveca Lindberg, ‘Enriching learning activities with epistemic practices – enhancing students’ epistemic agency and authority’, with Maja Elmgren, Maria Folke-Fichtelius, Stina Hallsén, Henrik Román (2016), Att ta utbildningens komplexitet på allvar. En vänskrift till Eva Forsberg, Uppsala Universitet: Uppsala Studies in Education 138.
This paper presents the findings from a study of industrial adjunct professors at two higher education institutions in Sweden. The aim of the study is to investigate the rationales and expectations for companies to invest time and money in the collaboration that adjunct professors represent. The study also explores the tasks adjunct professors are involved in. The study is a two-case study comprising 31 semi-structured interviews with university management, adjunct professors and their employers, the companies.
The results from the study show that the stakeholders have different expectations for the adjunct professors. While the companies are oriented towards education and students as future employees, the universities’ expectations are more related to research and research training. Notably, the different expectations are rarely explicit or known to the stakeholders or the adjunct professors. The adjunct professor has to interpret the often unspoken expectations.
As regards tasks, adjunct professors are involved in research, research training, advisory services and engineering education, although the latter in a limited way. They are involved in the employability agenda and educational collaboration, but except in one single case they do not develop existing, or create new, engineering curricula. The study concludes that adjunct professors could be used as a strategic resource for developing engineering curricula, provided that the expectations are expressed from all stakeholders from the beginning of the collaboration.
The spaces of schooling are not mere settings or backdrops where students’ learning take place, but are implicated in the production of knowledge and identities/subjectivities - spaces embody specific values, beliefs and traditions. In this paper we draw on visual ethnographic data from an all-boys school in New Zealand to examine how the spaces of schooling and PE perform health work in relation to the all round development of healthy young masculinities. By drawing on a complexivist philosophy we draw attention to how school policies, spaces, bodies, students, teachers all intersect to provide the boys with a socio-spatial context in which knowledge and learning about healthy young masculinities is constructed. We demonstrate how stereotypical notions of what boys should be doing and what they like doing is, for instance, materialised by the design and provision of schooling and PE as sporting spaces, based on a form of ‘healthism’, which privileges individualistic notions of health and the assumption that sport = fitness = health. We conclude that although the design and provision of schooling and PE spaces based on healthism is an important source of pleasures for young men, it also reinforces narrowly defined and even problematic forms of healthy young masculinities.
The study investigated student experiences of teaching practices in grade 9 at 2003, 2008 and 2014 after the Swedish education reforms of the 1990s. Teaching practices in both municipal and independent schools were related to student achievement and family background. Data from three nationally representative cohorts within the ongoing Swedish longitudinal ETF-project have been used. The results show changes from more conventional to more individualistic teaching practices. Independent schools emphasize more self-regulated learning. Child-centred forms of work are though found to be equally beneficial for student achievement as more conventional teaching methods. In spite of education reforms, family background is equally important for student achievement as earlier. Obtained results are discussed in relation to increased school competition in Sweden.
This paper reports a small-scale study on the websites of 12 K-9 schools from four municipalities in Sweden. The purpose of the study is to explore, describe, and compare what and how information relevant for parental use is presented by local schools on their websites, which reflect the schools’ perceptions, intentions and strategies of communicating and cooperating with families. Epstein’s six key components regarding parental involvement are used as a theoretical framework in order to examine and analyse the content of school website settings. To evaluate the website design features, the website evaluation metrics suggested by Parajuli are adapted and applied. The results indicate that information on school websites for parental use is generally limited. It seems that schools’ expectations for parental involvement in education are based mainly on the social aspects of student development, rather than on pedagogical issues. In general, the websites of independent schools are more attractive than most public schools’ websites in terms of information richness and freshness, variations and friendliness. There is a need to develop websites that are more accessible for parents with immigrant backgrounds and non-Swedish speakers.
The historical roots of what is now a modern Swedish school-age educare (SAEC) were formed from a social pedagogical starting point in which children’s social development, freedom and well-being were prioritized. SAEC has now become more focused on an educational pedagogical assignment and has been incorporated into the Swedish curriculum. SAECs could therefore be seen as institutions under reconstruction, in that their current work is formed in what can be regarded as a transition period. This transition could imply new points of departure concerning work practices and forms of documentation, both of that could challenge older traditions. Using policy enactment theory as a methodology, this case study discusses the work practices and forms of documentation that are in use now, with a specific focus on the latter. The main purpose of the article is to explore and develop SAEC staff’s points of departure for developing their documentation and assessments and how the new curriculum assignment is enacted in the context of SAEC’s pedagogical practices. The study’s findings show that the enactment process could be seen as an initiative based on local needs for clarity. The developed documentation and assessment practices are described as a cultural shift away from former practices.
The current study aims to deepen the knowledge of students’ experiences of teachers’ assessment related instructional actions, with particular focus on problematic consequences of an intensified assessment paradigm. Its empirical material consists of 20 focus-group interviews with a total of 102 sixteen- to eighteen-year-old students in ten Swedish municipalities. Through inductive qualitative content analysis on manifest data level, six categories of aspects emerge that together describe students’ experiences of assessment related instructional actions. Clearly, assessment, learning goals, knowledge requirements, tests, and grades are dominant elements in Swedish students’ classroom life. Consequently, they often feel strong pressure and great insecurity. For the students, it seems to make no difference whether assessment purposes are summative or formative. Rather, it appears to be the total amount of assessment related instructional actions that causes stress, and decreased desire to participate and learn in school. The results are problematized and discussed through the lens of the concepts of dilemmas and complementary attitudes. It is argued that the last decade’s intensified assessment paradigm, with its numerous macro-level reforms and decisions with bearing on summative as well as formative assessment, has led to teachers adjusting pedagogical and ethical positions in the classroom. Consequently, counterproductive practices seem to have evolved.
In the past few centuries, an accelerating process of legalization and classification have moulded the diverse range of earlier institutions into a limited number of isomorphic organizational forms. Today, institutions of higher education, with their roots in the corporate forms of medieval universities, can also have the legal status of, for example, government agencies, associations under public law, foundations, and joint stock companies. This article investigates the types of legal entities Swedish and Finnish institutions of higher education have been organized into in the period from the 1990s until 2020, and why these particular types have been chosen. It also explores how the special characteristics, aims, and demands of the university have caused adaptations to organizational forms such as joint stock companies and foundations. Comparative studies benefit from investigating societies that are as similar to each other as possible, making it easier to identify and isolate the effects of the factors that actually differ. In this respect, Finland and Sweden are ideal for comparative studies. Both Swedish and Finnish institutions of higher education have experienced coercive, mimetic, normative, and managerial-professional isomorphic pressure. However, there are important pre-existing national differences, such as the greater reliance on public agencies in Sweden and the multiplicity of semi-private legal entities in Finland, most significantly the associations under public law. These differences made the transition of universities into independent legal entities seem natural in Finland in 2009, while it was too radical in the Swedish context.
This article will discuss historical ideas about the modern academic research seminar. My perspective will be that of the history of emotions. The study is introduced by an extensive account of the emergence of the seminar at German universities in the mid-1700s. I will discuss the actual seminars established, beginning with the first, in Göttingen by philologist Gottlob Heyne, going on to that of his student Friedrich August Wolf in Halle, and ending with the foundation of the Berlin University with Wilhelm von Humboldt as executor. In all these contexts, new ideas concerning the seminar were important. In the next step, I will use historian Barbara Rosenwein’s concept of emotional communities to analyse one of the most central documents relating to the initial conception of the modern seminar, namely Friedrich Schleiermacher’s 1808 Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten im deutschen Sinn. I give a detailed account of Schleiermacher’s argument while showing how the text envisions a new community in which emotions play an all-important role as an integrating force. I also show how the ideas expressed in Gelegentliche Gedanken are part both of a general pattern of emotional history and of a specific development, often described as an affective turn, that emerged during the late 1700s. In that process, the feeling of love was particularly important, and my discussion will show that Schleiermacher’s text is a part of the affective turn in this respect.
The group of administrators working in the Swedish higher education sector is undergoing considerable change. National statistics show that the average educational level is increasing and that more staff are being recruited from the private sector. This article discusses the implications of such changes on life and work in academia. In particular, it points to a link between new administrative roles and new demands placed on universities to become more coherent, goal-oriented organisations – so-called strategic actors. The article builds on national statistics and an in-depth interview study of administrative professionals from the areas of internationalisation, business liaison and research funding support, at three technical universities in Sweden. The study indicates that administrative professionals can have considerable impact on the management of a university. Lacking formal decision-making power, their influence tends to be indirect. Nevertheless, they can fulfil important roles as guardians of a holistic perspective, reminding internal stakeholders of the organisational aims of the university. Their role requires a set of competences and experiences that includes academic background as well as an attitude of self-reflection, sensitivity and judgement. In conclusion, it is argued that administrative professionals can play a crucial part in transforming universities into strategic actors. Their function merits more attention as it touches upon important issues of power and strategic direction in contemporary higher education.
This article focuses on the co-operation between the Swedish National Agency for Education and school actors at the municipal level, examined from the latter’s perspective, within the context of a state-initiated school improvement programme, namely Co-operation for the Best School Possible (CBS). Co-operation between different levels of the school system is a neglected but essential aspect to analyse in a decentralised system such as Sweden’s, which is showing signs of re-centralisation. Empirically, the article is based on interviews with local actors in a small municipality participating in CBS. The interviews were part of a case study, and the analysis was guided by the theory of soft governance, Vedung’s concepts of sticks, carrots, and sermons as policy instruments, and Weick’s concept of sensemaking. Sensemaking, evident in the case study as a retrospective communicative notion, was employed to capture the local actors’ stories of how they perceived CBS. The connection with past experiences also played a part in their sensemaking since a clear history exists and was noted between the state and municipal levels. In conclusion, the analysis shows that CBS used sticks, carrots and sermons to steer municipal school actors towards the right path as regards school improvement. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This article focuses on the co-operation between the Swedish National Agency for Education and school actors at the municipal level, examined from the latter’s perspective, within the context of a state-initiated school improvement programme, namely Co-operation for the Best School Possible (CBS). Co-operation between different levels of the school system is a neglected but essential aspect to analyse in a decentralised system such as Sweden’s, which is showing signs of re-centralisation. Empirically, the article is based on interviews with local actors in a small municipality participating in CBS. The interviews were part of a case study, and the analysis was guided by the theory of soft governance, Vedung’s concepts of sticks, carrots, and sermons as policy instruments, and Weick’s concept of sensemaking. Sensemaking, evident in the case study as a retrospective communicative notion, was employed to capture the local actors’ stories of how they perceived CBS. The connection with past experiences also played a part in their sensemaking since a clear history exists and was noted between the state and municipal levels. In conclusion, the analysis shows that CBS used sticks, carrots and sermons to steer municipal school actors towards the right path as regards school improvement.
A key concern in international educational policy during the 21st century has been the impact of teacher professionalism on outcomes of schooling. Sweden makes for an interesting case because of the country’s initiatives to improve the quality of education through an academization of the teachers. The aim of this study is to analyse how Swedish state policy of ‘education on a scientific foundation’ is constructed in a selection of texts and videos presented by the Swedish National Agency of Education, and how these policy texts construct discourses of teacher professionalism. The result shows how the formulation in the Education Act, prescribing that the education shall rest on a scientific foundation, is interpreted into ‘policy-as-text’ and a policy apparatus consisting of four central concepts. Here, the terms ‘research-based way of working’ and ‘evidence’ are added to the terms ‘scientific foundation’ and ‘proven experience’ from the Education Act. Furthermore, the result shows three policy discourses of teacher professionalism that are constructed in the analysed texts: the selectively critical and accountable teacher; the positive, flexible, responsible and effective teacher; and the semi-autonomous teacher.
During 19992010, eligible Swedish university lecturers had an unconditional right to apply for promotion tothe position of professor. Our aim was to discuss the motives of the reform and to problematise challenges inmaking qualitative assessments of educational expertise. We presented the results from an evaluation of thereform, and we focused on the weights that the peer reviewers in their assessment assign to the educationalcredentials of the applicants as opposed to those assigned to the research credentials. The empirical materialconsists of the dossiers from 294 cases of promotion. For research expertise and for educational expertise, wecreated one and three indices, respectively, where different types of credentials were given different weights.Changes over time were examined, as well as differences between disciplinary domains. In the assessment anddecision process, educational expertise was outweighed by research expertise, and mainly quantitative aspectsof the former were taken into account. There were signs that the peer review system underwent changes andthat its intended quality-promoting function diminished over time.
In the Nordic context, transnational discourses influence recontextualisation of ideas and discourses, and thus, how local actors negotiate around values imbued with ideas and discourses. In Sweden, the idea of teacher assistants has been prompted – through policy discourses on teacher professionalism – under imperatives of reducing teachers’ workload and increasing professional responsibility and accountability. The aim of this article is to explore teacher assistants’ values regarding roles and responsibilities in relation to teachers and education in light of policy discourses on teacher professionalism. Drawing on discursive institutionalism and curriculum theory, the concept of ‘discursive space’ is utilized to explore values in an institutional context. Based on twelve interviews with teacher assistants in compulsory schools, the analysis shows how a reductionist notion of teaching gives rise to dilemmas around being teachers’ ‘alter ego’ when values around teaching as ‘core’ are prioritized. Dilemmas around local pluralization emerge when teacher assistants are viewed as a ‘solution’ to a plethora of issues. Challenges emerge in the context of ambiguity around teacher assistants’ orientation towards teaching or processes ‘surrounding’ teaching. The analysis illustrates conditioned values highlighting dilemmas and challenges, but also possibilities for discursive action. Altogether, a re-negotiation of teacher professionalism emerges in the discursive space.
There is a tension in Swedish preschool policy when it comes to a subject curriculum and a child-centred curriculum. This article examines how Swedish preschool teachers have dealt with this relationship by focusing on the purpose of the preschool and how preschool teachers become part of enacted preschool policy. The purpose of the study is to investigate Swedish preschool teachers’ policy talk pertaining to the preschool’s assignment to depart from children’s own interests and school-like subjects. The analysis of interviews with ten preschool teachers shows how local policy talk is positioned in favour of a child-centred discourse, how tensions can gradually appear in the same sequence and how different actualisations in the national curriculum change the interviewees’ messages. The interviews highlight how enacted preschool policy appears as multi-layered and messy, thereby actualising a discussion about the basic purpose of the Swedish preschool and its relation to school.
This article examines the relationship of curriculum and didactics through a social realist lens. Curriculum and didactics are viewed as linked and integrated by the common issue of educational content. The author argues that the selection of educational content and its organisation is a matter of recontextualising principles and that curriculum and didactics may be understood as interrelated stages of such recontextualisation. Educational policy and the organisation of pedagogic practice are considered as distinct although closely related practices of ‘curricularisation’ and ‘pedagogisation’. Neo-Bernsteinian social realism implies a sociological approach by which educational knowledge is recognised as something socially constructed, but irreducible to power struggles in policy arenas. More precisely, curriculum and didactics are not only matters of extrinsic standpoints. Recontextualising practices may also involve intrinsic features, that is, some kind of relatively generative logics that regulate curriculum design as well as pedagogic practice. In order to highlight certain implications for both curriculum and didactic theory, the author develops a typology that is analytically framed by principles of extrinsic relations to and intrinsic relations within curriculum or didactics.
This paper reports on a study of the recent curriculum reform of the Swedish upper secondary school, Gy11. Although aesthetics were not made compulsory subjects by this reform, all students have a statutory entitlement to be offered a minimum of one course in an aesthetics subject. We wished to determine whether students are actually being given the opportunity of choosing such subjects.
The study is a theory-based and content-oriented evaluation. Data are based on curriculum studies and a comprehensive survey of upper-secondary school principals.
Our findings indicate that while principals have generally organized aesthetics courses, students seldom choose this kind of educational content. Instead, students’ selection is ruled by indirect methods of manipulation.
This paper reports on a study of the recent curriculum reform of the Swedish upper-secondary school, Gy11. Although aesthetics were not made compulsory subjects by this reform, all students have a statutory entitlement to be offered a minimum of one course in an aesthetics subject. We wished to determine whether students are actually being given the opportunity of choosing such subjects.